


and since we've no place to go

by versigny



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Cabin Fic, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hate to Love, It Is Very Difficult To Hate Kim Minseok, Slow Burn, Snowed In, Unrequited Hate, Winter, ex-boyfriend
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 11:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11919714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/versigny/pseuds/versigny
Summary: Being stuck in a cabin for a week with no one but your sister's ex-boyfriend for company is something you wouldn't have wished on your worst enemies. Needless to say, your winter vacation is effectively ruined.But nothing could have prepared you for the cabin fever that comes with being trapped with Kim Minseok.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is super duper 10000000000% dedicated to [@soobadnoonecanstopher](https://soobadnoonecanstopher.tumblr.com/) on tumblr for being a total goddess and writing some of the best reader-insert fic I have ever had the dumb pleasure of viewing. I wanted to write her something to actually express how fucking thankful I am, and she requested "cabin fever" and "Xiumin Is An Ex-Boyfriend Of Some Kind" and "forbidden romance" and this is all TOTALLY NEW TERRITORY FOR ME but I tried and I'm gonna shut the hell up now bye

The face of the clock lets you know that  twenty-two hours and fifty six minutes have passed since you’ve been physically trapped in this cabin. It felt like something that only happened in movies — scattered phone calls, endless apologies, delayed flights that turned into cancelled flights due to blizzards that eventually coalesce into absolutely ruined plans. And now here you were: watching snowflakes patter harmlessly against the windowpane in your designated room while you frown at the whirling grey outside that had effectively derailed your winter vacation.

And somewhere, only a handful of meters away in another room, is your sister’s ex-boyfriend, and you’re trapped. Here. With him. Indefinitely.

You roll yourself into a hateful little ball of spite and thick quilts and groan into your pillows.

Twenty-two hours and fifty eight minutes. 

This is your new reality: this is going to be a very…  _very_ long week.

—

Thirty-six hours and twenty-one minutes. The sun hasn’t come up quite yet — or maybe it has, and the snowfall has just obscured it from your unworthy gaze. One side of the cabin is laden with white, anyway, and you can’t even see out those windows anymore.

But more importantly, what wakes you up is the heavenly scent of bacon and eggs and coffee. You would know the mouthwatering aroma anywhere, and weren’t even mad when it pulled you up out of some pleasant dream involving no clothes and a faceless, handsome stranger that had touched you with all the delicate calculation that only a dream man could.

In a fairly foggy, lightheaded state, you rub your face with your hands to try and wake yourself up, wrap a thick blanket around yourself, and trudge towards the kitchen.

It’s early enough that you’re not quite cognizant enough to be grumpy about him and the situation just yet. Your stomach is doing all the thinking for you by the time your feet pad across the cold hardwood to the steadily warming air where breakfast is being made, and you all but swoon at the beautiful sight of clean plates and empty mugs and a stove chock-full of food.

And finally, finally you let your eyes land on the person taking charge of it all.

Sensibly, this whole situation wasn’t that bad. Your sister’s plan to get all of your old friends together for a big trip to the mountains, to stay in a quaintly rustic but comfortable cabin and enjoy some time away from real life and mundane responsibilities… It was really a great plan, and you had all been very admittedly excited for it. Sure, a few extra unintentional people were invited along the way, but the place was huge and all of you had pooled your money and split the rent and managed not to break the bank in the process.

So it was fine. Even if your sister’s ex-boyfriend had accidentally been brought along in the process. And now he was standing in the kitchen, making both of you breakfast, for no reason at all.

“Good morning,” Kim Minseok said lightly, his smile soft and sweet and you felt sick to your stomach.

“Good morning,” you mumbled back, averting your stare to your toes hidden under the blanket cape you donned.

It would make things a lot easier if he would just, be rude or something. Anything. Throw you a fucking bone. But he doesn’t; instead, he dishes out toast and protein and somehow knows you like your coffee piping hot with sugar and no cream. And it’s not fair. It’s anything but.

Both of you sit at the table in silence.

There’s the clinking of silverware and chewing and intermittent slurping, of course; you remain trapped in your blanket burrito that provides some measure of protection against the evil man that’s trapped in cabin hell with you, and wonder at how he’s remained so  _calm_. But it’s not ordinary calm, frustratingly enough: he’s pleasant, somehow — he maintains something light and airy about him, carries himself with gentle confidence in a package of slender, attractive eyes that are too pretty for any man to have, and a saccharine smile that had devastated your sister’s life for many months. You were thankful, deep down, that his best qualities were also the ones that made it so easy to resent him.

You’re glad he hasn’t tried to make small talk with you. You didn’t want to deal with anything else on this nightmare trip.

So you finish breakfast without a peep. That’s not to say that you are both mute — Minseok is polite and you are begrudgingly so, and after the initial discussions on  _what the fuck is going on?_  followed by  _what the fuck do we do?_ things had fallen into a simple rhythm, more or less; he retreats to his room, you retreat to yours. You find him playing games on his phone or listening to music and minding his own business, and you stare at the ceiling and play podcasts in the background and nod off intermittently. He prepares meals without asking. Neither of you speak, but his lips always hint at a smile, even when you’re frowning.

You’re not thinking when you get up from the table.

This stupid place is getting to you, you decide somewhere in the back of your mind — cabin fever and all that stuff. The residence vacillates between having a chill in the air and being stuffy, and after your meal it was leaning towards the latter. You had just spent the last twenty-five minutes sitting across the table from one of the only people you had ever brought yourself to hate, having only said “good morning” and “thank you” to him thus far, and you were preoccupied with how you were going to endure the rest of this so-called vacation when you rise with your polished-off plate and empty mug in hand to go to the sink.

The blanket falls away on the chair, and you pay it no mind as you turn on the sink to wash your dishes. You’re so absorbed in the freezing water and suds that you miss your sworn enemy staring at you — really, truly staring at you — from his spot at the table, hardly blinking, mouth parted wordlessly. He doesn’t move a muscle for a long, long minute.

You don’t notice any of that though. You only notice him when you hear shifting at the table, and suddenly he’s  _there_ , in your space, hands in the sink as he takes away your plate to dry it.

You’re about to protest when his arm brushes yours. It’s a fleeting moment of contact, he’s just rolled up his sleeves and you’re still in the thin, oversized plain t-shirt you got from Forever21 back in college and a pair of cotton gym shorts, leaving you plenty exposed to his surreal body heat and the little pinpricks of electricity that seem to jump off his skin in waves. In the instant that your arms meet, there’s a whole current that runs through your nervous system and you gasp under your breath, startled at the shock.

But Minseok is just drying dishes without a care in the world. In fact, he’s humming softly, some song you think is  _almost_ familiar but you can’t put your finger on it, and he stolidly refuses to look at you.

You can’t let this slide.

“You don’t have to help, you know,” you grouse quietly, grimacing at the frothy sponge in your hand as the water runs. Droplets splatter against the cool metal and he just smiles, because apparently that’s all he fucking does.

“I’m well aware,” he answers lightly, passing off a dish to the rack.

You wished more than you had ever wished for anything that he was… well, not him. In any other situation, if this had been someone else — some other smoking hot guy full of kindness and consideration and too much charm for his own good — you could actually appreciate how domestic this was, the chemistry of it all. Minseok was hardly an inch away from you, side-by-side, both of you stuffed from his glorious homecooked meal and maybe, if he had been that guy from English 102 you almost made out with at a party, this would actually be enjoyable. Because you could, just, nudge your way closer — you could slowly coax him into turning around with his back to the counter, and you place your arms on either side of him to give yourself the leverage to lean in and up and press your mouth against his, taste the mixture of surprise and cream and sugar. Minseok would be the type to get a little noisy on accident, you think — squeaky and soft, with catching breaths — and then maybe give in all at once. Glancing at his hands as he worked, you spaced out when you saw his forearms flex subtly with each movement, relishing the flicker of amazement that came with the definition of muscle. He’s strong, isn’t he? He has to be with arms like that. He could pick you up and put you on the counter, and your legs would fit around his waist, you think, and he’s probably a  _very_ good kisser, and—

—and water splashes against your shirt as a dish fumbles out of his grasp and you gasp, tripping backwards.

“Shit! Sorry, sorry, I just, I got distracted?” Minseok’s voice hitches in apology, eyes flitting from you to the sink as he debates between grabbing a clean rag and drying you off or giving you your desired space. You’re still reeling from your daydream, and your body hasn’t caught up to the situation either; there’s a definite warmth in your belly that had nothing to do with the temperature.

God, you needed to get out of here.

“It’s fine,” you grit back, shaking your head, scrambling for your resolve. This was for the better, you think. This fucking cabin was getting to you.

You don’t look at him after that; you don’t want to see the look in his eyes, swirling with guilt and more apology and concern.

Fuck, why couldn’t things just work out the way they were supposed to?

The dishes get finished, somehow. You don’t think about his muscles at all during that time, and also not the static charge that lingers in the air between you.

You scoop up your blanket, wrap yourself up in its safe haven, and trudge back to your room.

—

Forty-one hours and nine minutes.

“So has it been weird? Normal? Getting along okay?”

“It’s been fine,” you sigh back over the phone, shifting around in your quilts. Your sister was persistent at best and you needed to avoid feeding her unintentional information. “We keep to ourselves. We exist. It’s fine.”

“I’m sorry again it ended up like this,” she sympathizes. You can hear voices in the background — the rest of your friends, presumably, all crowded in the hotel the airline had put them in for free. At least they were having a gay old time. “It’s just a few more days. Stick it out and try to have fun, alright?

“Sure,” you say sarcastically, scrunching your socks between your toes. “Sure thing.”

Truth is, you don’t want to stick it out, or have fun. Is that petulant of you? Absolutely yes. But you think you deserve a slice of the petulant pie — you had spent a decent amount of money to get away from real life and decompress in a winter wonderland of happiness and friendship, not a sleeted hellhole of bastard men and entrapping white frozen bullshit with a cherry on top that left you depleted and grumpy.

“This is going to sound crazy that I’m asking you this, but like… ugh, god, this sounds so crazy! Are you pitching a fit over Minseokie because of when we—”

“What? Fuck, sorry, I think you’re breaking up.”

You rubbed your hand mercilessly over the receiver for a few seconds before hollering, “I think the snow is ruining the signal, I’ll talk to you later! Have fun! Love you!”

The end call button was pressed and your phone was dropped unceremoniously onto the rug.

“’Minseokie’, huh?” you mutter to no one at all. You stared at the black screen forlornly, fighting down the tangle emotions your sister had wrought in you — if you couldn’t handle what was already going on, you sure as hell weren’t physically able to wrangle anything else. Not old memories, or past conflicts, or heartbreak. Lots and lots of heartbreak.

You really hated that part.

You anticipated wallowing in your misery for a good while longer. At least an hour or two.

You do not anticipate the faint sound of singing coming from the room across the hall.

You couldn’t quite hear it at first — the whistling of the whipping wind outside muffled quieter noises, but wherever Minseok was in the song, he was gaining traction and confidence. You didn’t know he could sing, you think to yourself dumbly as he warbles over a few notes like a bird. Absently, your fingers trail over the wood wall between you, as if you’re trying to feel the sound through the grain, and then it hits you: you know this song, he was humming this while he did dishes.

It feels like you’re trespassing in some strange way, listening in on his crooning as he does who knows what. What does he do in his free time? This? Your sister never told you he could sing.

You press your ear to the wall and close your eyes.

“… _dreamt about you nearly every night this week_ …”

Your heart promptly dropped into your stomach and you wrench away from the surface.

What was wrong with him? Why the hell was he singing that?

There’s no two ways about it anymore — you’re a certified mess. You don’t think twice before conveniently remembering that you meant to ask him about if he had used your shampoo, because it had totally seemed a tiny bit more empty than you recalled when you showered the day before, and with that thought driving you, you storm out of your room to confront him.

You pad silently, furiously to his door, slowing only as you approach and your nerves get the better of you. The lyrics are utterly scandalous and the way he shapes them with his mouth makes the whole experience that much more inappropriate, sending your heart into twisted shapes and uneven thumping. There’s not even a background instrument to dull the impact of the words; you wholeheartedly blame him for your muddled nerves as you reach for the knob without knocking and turn, sucking in a breath to interrogate him—

And Minseok is shirtless, swaying indulgently to the rhythm that comes from his earbuds as he folds clothes on his bed.

“… _I’m sorry to interrupt, it’s just that I’m constantly on the cusp of_ ,” he pauses, breathes out the words softly, “ _tryi-i-ing… to kiss you_ …”

You freeze in your tracks. In your head, your thoughts turn murky and faded, bordering on numb; every inch of his skin is smooth and warm-looking and sculpted around the edges with muscle. There’s strength even in his simple, silly little dance, and the subtle flex of his shoulders as he quarters his laundry patiently.

You will your feet to turn around and leave him, to go back to the sanctuary of your room and forget about your shampoo and him and that any of this ever even happened. Except the moment you  _think_ you can budge, he turns just enough to catch you moving in the corner of his eye and he splutters mid-lyric, dropping his shirt and scrambling to yank his music from his ears.

“Oh! I didn’t s-see you—”

“Uh.” You croak, body instinctively moving backwards towards the exit. Fight or flight was kicking in and you were fully prepared to sprint. “S-sorry! I didn’t mean… to interrupt…”

“No, no, it’s fine — it’s completely fine, are you alright? Did you need something?”

“N-no,” you stammer, volume at hardly more than a whisper. You couldn’t think or talk straight even if you tried right now, and now that he’s facing you you’re getting a full view of his torso. Fuck, he has  _abs_. Yet somehow he’s so lithe he might as well be made of marble and melted honey, and you wish your heart would just settle down and stop  _pounding_ in your ears because it’s even more distracting than he is right now. “Um. Nope. Nothing. I don’t… remember. Sorry again. I-I’ll leave you to it, Minseokie.”

You’re gone, half-tripping on your way out as you shut the door tightly behind you. You don’t remember walking back to your room, or really anything between then and however long later when you blink at the ceiling, grimacing as you try to erase the after-image of his figure from your eyelids.

It’s not until forty-three hours and nineteen minutes that you realize what you called him, and scream.

—

The next day, around fiftyish hours or so, is different.

You wake up late for breakfast, but he’s quick to appear and reheat it for you, going as far as making a fresh pot of coffee and chatting about how he almost burnt his eggs. Minseok talks to you like you’re his old friend, and like there is no elephant in the room, like nothing is awkward at all.

And all you can think about is him shirtless.

It’s ironic, in a way; didn’t people always say imagine someone naked to get rid of any nervousness? That was a bad thing to think about. Now you’re picturing him naked. In the kitchen. And he’s right by the counter tops, just like the other morning.

You can feel your face burning up like a wildfire and pray to the high heavens he’ll think it’s just too stuffy inside.

“You alright?” he asks lightly after so many minutes of him filling the silence with conversation. You flinch and try to cover it up with a weak smile, gulping.

“Yeah. Just still waking up. Is it, um, warm in here?”

Minseok smiles and it’s far, far too stunning for words. For half a second, you’re giddy the smile was directed at you, and just for you, and want to earn more of them, and your brain functions normally for several ticks. There are plenty of things you could talk to him about, but all of that turns to ashes as you forcibly remind yourself who the hell he is and talking to him is absolutely not what you should be doing, at all, ever again.

“I don’t think so,” he chimes back. “Why? Are you hot?”

“A little, but… n-nevermind.”

“Don’t nevermind me, missy. I’ll see if I can calm the fireplace down some for you.”

You really should protest, but it all falls flat on your tongue, and just like that, Kim Minseok has won.

It’s the first day you’ve been here and really, actually conversed with him. For some reason, after he messes with the burning logs, he suddenly thinks it’s okay to sit around and join you while you eat and chat more, and as hard as you try to give one-word, non-committal answers and shrugs and grunts, he just keeps at it. In fact, he almost seems  _amused_  by your responses, like you are somehow a fun and entertaining toy to him.

That’s when it dawns on you for the first time that maybe, just maybe, this cabin is making him crazy, too.

The thought is oddly soothing. Both of you are in this together. You’re not suffering alone — Minseok is just as trapped as you are, forced to endure your company. Rationally, he shouldn’t really like you, either, right? He has to know some extent of your feelings towards him ( _vitriolic, acerbic, repulsed, etc_ ) and that can’t be fun. The concept of it leaves you with a twinge of guilt, but you push it away violently and return to spreading jam on your toast and shoving it in your mouth, savouring the sweetness.

“I’m glad you like my cooking,” he speaks gently, and it’s so unexpected that you choke.

“Careful!”

He’s right there instantly, patting your back to help you clear your throat, and you swallow the food down properly as the blood rushes to your face.

“I-I’m fine!” you cough, reaching for the coffee. “I’m… f-fine. Fuck. Th-thank you, for always cooking, I mean. I appreciate it.”

“It’s no problem.”

Again, one of those painfully tender, pretty smiles, directed straight at you like a spotlight and it washes over you like warm bathwater.

And his hand, strong and delicate, is still lingering deftly against your back, burning through the layers of your blanket and t-shirt straight to your skin.

“I meant to ask earlier, but…” His face is open and honest, you notice vaguely, with only the barest hints of something else flickering in his dark eyes, but he shrouds it well enough that you can’t quite catch what it might be. “…Would you want to play a board game or watch a movie later? The cabin is pretty stocked and I think I might actually lose my entire mind if I have to stay in my room another day. I was so bored I did laundry.”

You stifle a laugh unthinkingly, and reply just as freely. “Minseok, we’ve been here three days.”

This time, you earn a full, glorious grin, his eyes crescenting and vanishing with mirth. “That’s very true. How do you feel about anime?”

—

Fifty-something-ish hours. You’ve lost track.

True to his word, he breaks out a pack of cards and makes boozy hot chocolate. It’s devastating. The fat mug is piled high with whipped cream and the warmth radiating from the ceramic seeps into your hands like your own personal fireplace, and you almost resent yourself for not just sucking it up and being friends with him years ago. All this time you’ve been missing out on  _this_ , his completely surreal ability to make incredible meals (alcoholic beverages included) and god, amaretto has never tasted so sinful.

“Threes?”

“Not in my lifetime! Go fish.”

You pull another card from the deck, adding it to your already ample fan that you flutter absently before your eyes like a sultry courtesan in a western saloon.

“You’re not making this easy for me,” you pout, scanning your hand and finding no pairs, again. As if the cards had magically changed since the last time you checked.

“It’s part of the universal order. I must make things difficult for you,” he teases, and then asks, “Fives?”

“Fuck you.”

You fork over the five of diamonds with a glower and you can almost feel him purring through his curved lips.

“I don’t think you mean that,” he hums, and you can’t muster a response.

There’s no shock when you lose Go Fish badly, and blackjack only goes slightly better since he decides to not keep score. At some point, the fire has died down and when he gets up to revitalize it he suggests a movie.

So you bundle yourself up and wander out to the couch and find him sliding a DVD into the player.

“Have you seen Spirited Away? It’s one of my favourites.”

You’re surprised he picks that one — you had anticipated something more action, or… well, just something you wouldn’t like. As it turns out, you were quite fond of it.

“Yeah, I love Spirited Away. That sounds fun.”

It takes a few minutes to get situated, and once you do, you find yourself opening your mouth to speak.

“Have you seen the weird internet theories about this opening part?”

Minseok’s brow perks — he’s in normal, boyish pajamas, a t-shirt and flannel pants, but the jacket wrapped around him is thick and cozy and he looks… happy, just happy to be here on this couch with you, watching this movie. You’re still not ready to combat the feelings it elicits deep in your chest like cotton and butterflies, but maybe that’s just the amaretto talking.

“I have not. Go on?”

Smiling nervously, you brush back your hair to busy your hands and explain, “There’s just some posts put together here and there about how the forest is totally overgrown when they get out, but not when they go in.”

He blinks once, twice. Then his eyes go wide. “…Oh my god.”

There’s something painfully cute about his reaction, and it spurns you to keep rambling. “I know! I stared at the screenshots like an idiot forever when I saw the comparison! But, yeah, whoever it was talking about how time passes differently in the spirit world, and how the moss growing on the stone implied that like… it had been many, many, many years since they had gone in. It was so scary. It honestly made me not want to watch the movie ever again.”

You pause, wetting your lips, forgetting to be embarrassed. You’re forgetting everything you’re supposed to, actually — who he is, who you are, why you’re here and what stands between you. The stonelike structures of your memories of your sister coming home in bitter tears, cursing his name and not eating for days because of  _him_ , his actions alone… all of them are wisps of fog, rapidly vanishing to the far corners of your mind. How are you supposed to think about those things when you’re so close, and he’s so warm, and so sweet, and so impossibly captivating with just the corners of his mouth upturned?

“But then I saw another one,” you go on, breathing out rather than speaking the words, and swallow down the knot in your throat. “A response to the first. And it said that the illusion started long before the amusement park — it started on the road there. Something about how spirits lure people in and trick them that way by playing with their emotions. The entrance at the end of the movie is its actual appearance, and the beginning is the mirage. They accidentally trick themselves.”

“Because they’re selfish humans and they’re easily swayed,” Minseok laughs weakly, and he rests his chin on a hand, still totally marveling at it all. “Wow. That’s… wow. I would have never thought of that in my whole life. Thank you for telling me, really, I appreciate it.”

You can’t say you mind being the full center of his attention, and you can’t say you regret telling him what you did. His response hovers in your head, however, and you mull on it subconsciously while he breaks out the deck of cards again and suggests attempting a pyramid.

Humans are selfish and easily swayed.

You don’t decline, of course. But both of you are very bad at balancing cards on the glass table top, and it collapses a dozen times before you give in and let him change the foundation to add a blanket underneath them for support.

He’s right, you think. If Chihiro’s family hadn’t been so absorbed in their own qualms, they wouldn’t have been seduced.

You glance at the screen to see the beautiful animation of the glittering white dragon gilded with seafoam and piercing eyes, and half-smile. If they hadn’t screwed up, though, Chihiro would have never met Haku. Sure, she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about him, and bordered frequently on frustrated disdain because he was kind and helpful and trustworthy even though he shouldn’t have been at all, and an uncomfortable squeezing in your heart piqued your attention and reminded you of someone who was sitting right beside you on the damn couch—

“Holy crap. I think I got it.”

You’re wrenched from your train of thought at the soft glee that comes from Minseok, head whipping to suddenly witness an almost-completed card tower. Your jaw hangs slightly and you turn from him to the structure in a double-take of pure awe, and a grin blossoms across your cheeks.

“Holy fucking shit, you did it!”

You want to jump up and dance in celebration, but that would unquestionably end in tragedy for the pyramid so you forego the impulse control to reach out and excitedly grab his hand instead. You feel him twist his wrist to wrap his fingers around yours so he can squeeze back, and it’s because he’s just as thrilled as you are, his eyes bright with intent as he stares you down.

“You finish it,” he demands, and you instantly balk.

“What? Oh no no no, I’ll ruin it—”

“Will not. And if you do I don’t care. You do the honors.”

You grimace, fidgeting in your spot. The image of the deck collapsing in one big, disappointing heap would suck so much, and you’re half-certain he just doesn’t want the responsibility of being the one to destroy all the painstaking progress. But then he’s placing two cards in your free hand with a determined gaze that says there is absolutely no way he’s letting you off the hook.

There’s literally not a single reason you have to obey. But you do.

You only passingly notice you were holding hands far, far longer than you needed to, but shake off that thought and bite your lip in concentration. Steadying your breathing is a herculean effort, and there’s nothing you can do about the slight shake in your hands, but what’s done is done — you just have to give it a shot and if it all falls apart then it’s fine.

The air is still. The sounds from the large flatscreen are muted to your ears, and your vision tunnels on the incomplete pyramid as you inhale and hold your lungs, and move forward.

You can feel Minseok’s eyes on you like heat lightning following your every motion with bated breath. The cards are pinched together in the shape of an upside-down V, and you still refuse to breathe, muscles rigid in your arms as you approach the apex and calculate just how delicately you can place them.

The light from the room is mostly from the television, and the fireplace. The shadows flicker and dance around you as you squint, tongue peeping out from between your teeth in focus, and the edges of the cards come in contact with the peak and you very, very carefully begin to let go, aligning them at the top and bottom corners—

And they immediately slip and the make whole thing fall down in a graceless, abrupt finish.

A few seconds tick by wordlessly; Spirited Away keeps playing in the background as you feel your expression contort into horrified disdain and anguish, and a moment later your ears prick up at the musical sound of laughter from your right.

“Oh babe, you tried so  _hard!_ ”

You know you must look like an idiot, staring up at Minseok with pathetic, sad, puppy-dog eyes and heartbreak and petulance written across your features. But he’s nothing but carefree giggles, wholly unconcerned with the ruins that lay wasted on the table or the movie on-screen.

“Don’t look at me like that! I’m not mad, I’m not — and I’m not laughing at you, I promise, you just… That was so cute! Why are you so upset?”

Part of you is alarmed at how easily you admit the truth, and you blame it on how flustered he has you. Everything always seems to be his fault.

“I didn’t want to mess it up in front of you!” you whine, and are acutely aware of how much like a child you sound like. Minseok’s gaze softens at that — his whole body does, somehow, and he leans in to brush a loose hair out of your face. His knuckles stray gently across your knit brow and creased cheek, as if trying to smooth away the wrinkles of your unhappiness, ease you back into smiles again.

“S’okay,” he whispers, meager inches between the two of you as he slowly retracts his hand. “I would much rather you messed up in front of me than anyone else. Just imagine, there could have been a room full of people instead, you know? But it was just me.” Minseok pauses, still lingering too close. Far too close. You can see the very curvature of his lips, and practically count his eyelashes if you tried. He was definitely in kissing distance. Not that it mattered, at all, even a little bit.

“I guess so,” you mumble back, struggling to figure out where you should look. It’s easy, tempting even, to want to remain fixated on all the particulars of his enticing mouth. His lips are so inviting and the mixture of endearment and heat in his dark eyes leave you breathless.

A corner of his mouth quirks up and he waggles his brows. “No. I know so. I’m glad it was just you and me.”

A spark of contrariness flashes by long enough for you to retort, “Yeah, you know, if everyone else was here there’s no way in hell we would be doing this, dummy.”

Minseok doesn’t miss a beat.

“Then I’m glad it worked out this way.”

The conversation lulls after his admission — you’re at a loss for words and sensibility, frankly. You fiddle nervously with the strings on your pants, wiggling your toes against the upholstery of the couch and wondering why your mouth is so dry. Furthermore, this newfound sixth sense where you can  _feel_ Minseok’s presence, be acutely aware of every tiny move he makes and hear his each breath and the way your periphery picks up the smallest twitch of his body is all wildly, wildly distracting and honestly inappropriate. Your brain’s thinking patterns aren’t helping remotely. The hyperawareness snowballs into past memories — his singing in his room, his shirtless figure, the taste of his cooking and the genteel way he did anything and everything. Nobody like him should have even existed.

You allow yourself a spare glimpse at him; he’s distractedly watching Spirited Away again, his own fingers toying with the hem of a pillow. Even like this, he’s unbelievably radiant. How did people like him come into existence? Even in high school he was this way. Even with the bad haircuts and the awkward phases, he helped you with your math homework and gave you rides home, was never ashamed of your companionship despite being in different grades and him dating your sister. Even after the breakup, he treated you with the utmost respect — and you spited him for that, because there was utterly no reason at all for him to go and hurt your beloved sister so callously and turn around and continue being a gentleman. It was snakelike.

“Why do you keep staring at me?”

You give a start at the sudden question, knocked from your reveries wholly unprepared. Without time to recover, you gape and blink, shutting your mouth and then opening it, failing to find your voice because he caught you so off-guard.

“Um,” you stammer, “what?”

“You’ve been staring at me for like five minutes,” Minseok explains with a half-smirk, but it’s not accusatory. There’s only a touch of teasing lilt to his docile query, and you feel the blood creeping up in your neck, flushing your skin.

“It’s nothing,” you answer blandly, averting your gaze, and know you’ve convinced no one. Not even the rug.

There’s a long drop of silence before he speaks up one more, so quietly you almost miss it.

“I didn’t say you had to stop.”

In fact, you have to convince yourself that you heard him right — you glance up, wide-eyed and tensed only to find him pointedly looking at the TV screen again, and bite your lip subtly when you catch him surreptitiously glance back at you before returning to the safety of the movie.

You can’t look away this time; won’t look away. If he was inviting you to, then why should you stop? It was late, anyway, and dark out, and the room was thick with heat from the fireplace and the tension that kept mounting between you like smouldering coals from the base of the chimney. The amaretto must have been doing a very good job of doing what it was supposed to be doing.

You don’t know how much time passes before he slowly turns, and gazes openly back at you.

Seconds tick and tick on by, and something in the space between you morphs and grows like a pressure, a thread that connects you and longs to pull you closer and closer together. Minseok’s eyes have gone half-lidded, and it might have looked sleepy if not for the obscene way his lips parted with drawn-out breaths and his teeth passed over the pliant skin contemplatively. When his head tilts, irises flickering down to your mouth and then further to your throat, the flash of collarbone exposed from your comfortably rumpled shirt, and then down even more, you feel your whole body squeeze with anticipation.

“Minseokie?” You barely hear your own voice, don’t even recall deciding to say his name aloud.

“Yeah?” he rasps back, his voice thin and tight and unexpectedly sensual. Something in you knots repeatedly at the sound of it, and your thoughts turn wild and frantic in turn, fueled by the desire to hear him say your name in the same way. You adored how he said your name, how his tongue rolled it around in his mouth before he spoke it.

It’s only a matter of time before he leans in and closes the gap between you, captures you in a kiss that’s been building for what feels like years. Every nerve is alive and vibrating, waiting for him to provide you with the relief only he can give, and you’re just about to close your eyes when you see his jaw set and a tendon flex in his neck, screwing his own eyes shut as if he’s in physical pain.

The moment passes in an instant. One second he’s the incarnation of sex, brimming with a raw ache to break you down in the most vulnerable way on the couch cushions, and the next he’s a respectfully withdrawn, faintly smiling man who’s hiding a world of torment in his blown-out pupils.

“I’m gonna use the bathroom,” he announces in a mumbled rush, getting up in one fluid motion but turning a bit wobbly-legged once he’s on the ground. He doesn’t look at you; not really. You think maybe he chances a glimpse but it’s too quick, too subtle to be certain, and then just like that he’s gone, feet padding down the hall and away from you.

The living room is substantially colder with him gone. It’s almost amazing how much body heat he exuded just from sitting next to you, and unable to grasp what’s just happened yet you simply wrap your blanket around you robotically, blinking stupidly at the wall as your mind sits in a pleasantly blank static. Your lips still thrum with the possibility of being kissed, and it’s evident several minutes have passed between your daze and his return, because Chihiro is crossing the river and being told not to look back.

“Ah, just in time,” he greets, considerably more normal sounding. As if nothing questionable at all had just taken place between you.

“What? Oh, y-yeah, this.” You croak, forcibly giving your attention to the movie again.

Sure enough, as Chihiro’s family exits the hidden ruins, it’s laden with moss and overgrown grass and debris. Minseok sits back down — with a much more polite amount of space between you this time — and watches with rapt, subtle enthrallment.

But then your heart drops.

You had forgotten that the car was dusty, too. An illusion couldn’t explain that.

“That’s so unbelievable.” He’s still smiling lopsidedly at the ending credits as he marvels over the theory coming to fruition right in front of him. Almost. “Wow. I’m going to be thinking about this forever. Thank you for watching with me. Really.”

“T’was nothin’,” you murmur, unable to put much energy behind your own smile. “Um, I’m pretty tired, I think I’m gonna… yeah.”

You’d like to imagine that his smile falters then. “Ah! Okay! Understandable. Please get some sleep, princess. I’ll have breakfast ready when you wake up.”

You can’t muster the energy to be happy at the term of endearment, either — you just awkwardly wave goodnight from under the blanket and stumble off the couch, inhaling sharply when firm hands catch you and steady you enough to keep walking. You, unlike him, don’t look back; if you do, you might not have the strength to go back to your room.

The whole cabin gets colder and colder the further you travel through it. It feels like miles to get down the hall to your bedroom, and when you turn the knob you’re met with a gust of near-frigid air that prompts you to shiver and kick the door shut before throwing yourself onto your mattress. You were eternally appreciative that the beds were decently comfortable, and waste no time in burying yourself in layer after layer after layer, eyes squeezed shut as you wriggle and writhe and let the insulation take place.

Naturally, however, you can’t just fall asleep. Your heart is heavy and tired from the weight of the last few hours, and the cozy bundle of nest-bedding you’ve created is quick to lull you into serene sleepiness — but your nerves are still frazzled, jumpy, waiting for a sign to come back to life. Minseok’s glazed, alluring expression and the thought of all the ways he could have, might have ravished you are still fresh in your skin and bones, and you sigh fitfully into your pillow, rubbing your thighs together in quiet agony.

No, no, no. You won’t do this. You refuse to touch yourself. You can’t give in.

You are infinitely grateful when sleep wins you over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song mentioned is "Do I Wanna Know?" by Arctic Monkeys ;)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE'RE GETTIN' A LITTLE MORE ADULT AROUND HERE but it's not actual smut yet, fair warning ;)

Just like he promised, you wake up to breakfast.

It’s poached eggs this time, and a big plate of fruits that were going to go to waste if you both didn’t start chowing down on them. There was no way you’d be able to handle all of the food supplies — you had brought enough for an entire group of friends, not an accidental, displaced couple of uncertain acquaintances — and you aren’t sure if you’re frustrated or happy or both when Minseok greets you with a heart-melting smile and an enthusiastic  _good morning_.

“I’ve never seen someone as suspicious as you when you first wake up,” he mentions offhandedly, a vague smirk playing at his lips as he places your coffee in front of you. God, you could really get used to this — did he treat all of his friends this way?

Not that you were… well, friends. You just knew each other from way back. You  _used_ to be friends, you supposed, but you… definitely shouldn’t be anymore. It’s been far too long.

Right?

“Explain,” you frown during your first mouthful of delectable eggs. They were the perfect temperature and gooey and so, so good and you almost shut your eyes and moan around the flavor.

You don’t catch his breath hitching, his expression flicker before he clears his throat and covers it all up with a smile as he continues, “You always walk out like you think I’ve set a minefield under the table. Or that I poisoned the food. Or that I’m going to jump you.”

“Jump me?” you swallow down the eggs and give him a pointed look, dangling your fork menacingly in your hand. “Jump me how?”

“Oh, who knows?”

There’s something devious in the laugh that bubbles up from him, and he doesn’t press it.

If he was trying to make you fixate on that innocuous statement for hours to come, it was working.

But the rest of breakfast is, dare you say it, enjoyable. Normal, even, despite the fact that this is the first day you’ve gotten semi-dressed — if a shirt and yoga pants and your favourite cap to hide your unwashed hair count as ‘dressed’. None of the leftover awkwardness of last night lingers; if anything, it’s replaced by a low humming of potential, like a secret that hangs in the air made of promises and easy dialogue about Christmas music and what your favourite seasons are. Both of you agree that there’s such a thing as too much snow without actually bringing up the situation at hand, but too much heat is draining, too. He likes watching flowers bloom and you like watching the leaves change colors, so visibly shifting seasons are agreed upon being important.

It was all useless information, in the end, because in three days when this was all said and done with you both were probably not going to speak again for months. Not until the next big, friendly get-together.

It stunned you how suffocatingly painful that prospect was suddenly.

Again, after polishing off the generous amount of food, you wash dishes side-by-side, and Minseok hums that stupid god damn song again and it sends shivers rushing boldly down your spine. All the little hairs on your skin stand on end with it and you body begs to be touched, as if his harmless actions keep winding you up further and further until you’re ready to explode. You prayed it was all just proximity and hormones and not the ugly, slim, improbableness of stupid old childish feelings trying to wriggle to the surface under the guise of familiarity, but—

“Did you know,” Minseok began with the hush of having a big reveal under his belt, “that there are three seasons of The Office stashed with the DVDs?”

It’s as if the planets align, and heaven’s gates open with the welcome arms of the Lord waiting for you. You’re visibly shameless when your head swings up, starry-eyed and mouth parted in a wide smile.

“Are you serious?” you whisper in radiant disbelief.

Minseok’s lips curl up with catlike pleasure. “Deadly.” And his eyes sparkle.

There’s only the tiniest flicker of awareness when you both return to the same couch where everything had caught up with you so abruptly, but it all smooths over when he distracts you with a board game you’ve never played involving trains and pops the first disc in. Sliding into a rhythm that makes the day float by is nearly effortless; Minseok unsurely teaches you how to play the game, which he’s admittedly only played once before (but swears he enjoyed it greatly), and it’s only two games before you’ve found your footing and are kicking his ass.

Perhaps more peculiar is the way you talk, now — as if nothing was out of the ordinary. If you took a step back and really, truly looked at the situation, dwelled for a moment on the fact that your friends were all enjoying swimming pools and bar hopping while you were willingly — willingly! — spending quality time with someone you thought you hated… But it was worse than that, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just quality time. Even now, idly tuning in to laugh at the office antics and feel your heart clench at all the secret, unspoken moments between Jim and Pam, you had to swallow down the very difficult fact that you were enjoying this. Relishing this. No, even fucking worse — you wanted to shove the table out of the way and crawl into Kim Minseok’s lap and kiss your way up his neck and let him sink into you and make you forget every horrible thing he’s ever done.

The only breaks you take are to switch games, DVDs, get snacks, and use the restroom. In the meantime, you unintentionally discuss your lives and find out things you didn’t know you wanted to know. Minseok took a year off and waited tables and traveled. He won a talent show in college that he entered by accident. He started singing because he found it was an easy way to curb his occasional anxiety — singing was like shouting without the insanity of it, and singing forced you to control your breathing.

In turn, he is rapt with genuine interest when you stumble over your tales of graduating without graduating (“The stupid, worthless fuckers never told me I was missing one fucking credit and I lost a job offer because I didn’t technically have my degree and had to retake a stupid fucking English course online!” “You’re kidding me.” “I fucking wish I was.”), the multitudes of spontaneous and risky road trips (“I’ve called out more sick days than I actually have and it got me fired once. Please don’t tell anyone that, everyone thinks that I quit.” “I’ll take it to the grave. I wish I was as brave as you.”), and how you picked up hiking because it made you feel safer being outside than being trapped at home.

“This must be a living hell for you then,” he sympathizes with a crooked smile, and pops a cherry into his mouth. You nearly forget to reply you’re so taken aback by how his lips wrap around the scarlet of the fruit, and his mouth twists cutely before he swallows and places the pit onto a napkin.

“Mmm,” you agree a few octaves too high, and swallow thickly, clearing your throat and trying to shake off the spell he accidentally pulled you under. “Umm, yeah. Y-yeah. It’s just a nice… distraction. Trees. Nature. I mean— It was supposed to be a pleasant distraction, with all the… mountains… and things.”

Minseok nods thoughtfully. He traces the outline of a stem, and if he’s not saying something, it’s certainly hanging in the air like a very tempting noose.

“Do you not like being home, then?” he asks.

There’s nothing threatening about the query by any means. You search and search his features for something to slip through a crack, to grasp at what he’s really getting at, but his poker face is not to be trifled with at the moment.

So you answer him, toying with the peel of a tangerine and twitching your nose at the sweet citrus.

“I do,” you say, but find pause to choose your words cautiously. “It just gets boring if I’m not careful. But boring is better than hectic, I think.”

“That’s quite fair. Was your family’s home hectic?”

“A bit,” you chuckle, pulling off your cap to push your hair back and sigh. “A lotta bit, sometimes.”

Minseok grins, all traces of anything questionable missing. He’s just there, and your friend (for now, at least), and what’s the harm in wanting to kiss him more than you’ve wanted anything else in the world?

You didn’t have to tell anyone. You could take  _that_ to the grave and be happy knowing it alone.

“Things definitely get frustrating with my little sister sometimes. I always wanted to do too much to protect her, or overthought things on her behalf. Mom was always the one to bring me back down to Earth…”

The confession is endearing on its own — Minseok had always been a very, very loving brother, and had talked about his sister often back in high school. But the way he smiles down at the ground, just a touch of self-consciousness laced into his crescented eyes and pink cheeks, all rapidly destroys your defenses. In the background, Jim talks about Pam’s favourite yogurt and in the back of your mind you envision the fridge and Minseok’s Greek brand that he adds honey to.

At all once, you think that there might be no fighting this after all. Your fingers fidget from the lust to hold his hand and touch him again, and the floodgates of endless years of radio silence and repressed feelings bubble up and up and up, itching to all boil over because it would feel so damn  _good_ to just give in like you’ve always wanted.

“Your sister wasn’t quite that bad with you, though,” he laughs, covering his mouth with his hand cutely as his eyes melt on you in an old, sentimental way that has you breathless. “She was much more patient than I was. More reasonable. That’s how you always ended up out of trouble.”

Your sister. He says it all with the utmost respect and nostalgia, just like old friends catching up and having a giggle over a story from the distant past. And instead of eliciting the same reaction in you, a cold chill floods your system like a bucket of ice has been dumped promptly on your fucking head. Your  _sister_. How could you have forgotten her so easily? It takes a second to Minseok to register the good-natured expression on your face turn subdued and sour, and you’re still trying to get a grip on the shock of it all when you flash a forced smile. 

“Yeah. …Yeah. I’ll be right back, gonna use the bathroom.”

When did it get so unreasonably fucking stuffy in this godforsaken cabin?

You abscond faster than is strictly necessary, and go nowhere near the bathroom. In fact, you head straight across the house to the front, far, far away from the living room and the serpentine, vile ways of Kim Minseok. The snow has been building up steadily, and it will probably dump more sometime in the next several hours — but it’s only delicate flurries right now that leave the entrance a picturesque landscape of massive trees with black bark and heavy white and green boughs that stagger down and up the hollows.

With some force, you grit your teeth and shove a window open, shoving your head out into the freezing air and sucking in a breath. It’s pure ice and stings your sinuses and lungs as it goes down with a jolt, but you welcome it — you need to clear your head from the muddled, delusional high you had just immersed it in, and the cold is doing a fucking great job of it.

Part of you, almost, wants to cry. Crying would feel really good right now, too. You’re feeling too many things and feel like Tinkerbell most of all, because your body is definitely too small to be feeling all of these emotions at once, and you drop your head down onto your folded arms on the windowsill, just breathing, in and out, in and out. If you can just keep inhaling and exhaling, maybe you won’t have to cry, and maybe these last three days will go by in a blur and you can go back to pretending that Kim Minseok is dead, or suffering, or unattractive, and not someone you have wanted even when you never should have to begin with.

“Fuck,” you whine, clenching your jaw and blinking fitfully. And then a gust comes out of nowhere, whipping at your hair and throwing more snow and cold at you and scraping your hat straight off of your head.

“FUCK!”

You gasp in horror, jerking up and banging your skull on the open window but you don’t feel it — you just wince and go slack-jawed as your cap skips and bounces across the pristine, untouched snow, carried violently by the demanding wind. More expletives and the noises of a suffering animal leave your throat, and you’re not sure how long Minseok has been there when you finally notice him blinking dumbly at the scene of your hat.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” The urgency and concern in his voice has you hurrying to give him an answer.

“M-my favourite hat, it just— fuck, it flew off my head, and I—!”

You don’t even finish your sentence. One second Minseok is there, ready to spring, and the next he’s dragging himself out the open window in only his sweatpants, hoodie, and socks. He lands in the deep snow with a crunch and a low hiss before he’s off, kicking through it and taking huge steps as he follows the skid marks of your cap to go get it.

“M… Minseok?” You can’t do anything. You’re stuck, one hand clutching your head where a bump may or may not form, and your heart is slamming out a drumline in your chest more like a battered gong than any normal percussion, and Minseok is getting further and further away with determination as the white fluttering in the air picks up. Great timing — the snow that was due decided this was the deadline.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Fuck,” you groan. “Minseok? Minseok! What are you trying to do?! Don’t— You shouldn’t be…  _Minseok!_ ”

If he heard you, he doesn’t show it. Chewing anxiously on your lip, you realize you’re shivering quite badly and the open pane is rampantly sucking all of the heat out of the cabin, and you curse again as you shut the window and rub your arms to friction the warmth back into your skin. The snow has left your hair damp, and your eyes flicker with dread from the quickly darkening sky and the way the scenery grows more and more pale, shrouded with precipitation.

You stand there, waiting. And waiting.

Minutes pass and Minseok is gone.

The awareness of what might be happening to you, to him, sinks into your stomach like a stone in your gut. You can’t feel the cold, suddenly; you’re just blankly searching the endless sweeps of white and finding nothing. Nothing at all.

Dully, you turn over small facts in your mind to try and grasp them. Minseok is wearing socks, sweatpants, and a hoodie — not dressed for the weather whatsoever. He’s searching for your hat in over a foot of fresh snow. He’s been gone for an unknown amount of time now, and more minutes pass as you slowly process that reality — that hypothermia sets in faster than you want to believe, and frostbite moreso. Maybe this wasn’t a nightmare vacation anymore. Maybe this was an unbelievable, horrific tragedy in the making, the kind that nobody believes will ever happen to them, until it does, and then the world ends right in front of you without ending at all and forcing you to keep going along with it.

Tangible, recognizable emotions like dread and panic make their way to the surface not long after, and your eyes prick with earnest tears as your fingernails dig into the grain of the wood. Kim Minseok, alone and very cold, might be dying. Might be dead. With a surge of wild energy, your frame trembles with a violent impulse to just fucking  _go after him_ , sprint out the window and hunt him the fuck down and drag him back and never, ever,  _ever_ wear hats again, but the last rational remnants of your mind remind you patiently that you might die, too, and it’s just a bad idea.

This is it, isn’t it? This is really how things are going to end.

The tears are welling up faster than you can swallow them down, and with shaking hands you realize that you should probably get your phone and call emergency services. Who knows if anyone would even make it up in time, if they could even make it up in time in this climate, but you have to try and do something or else you might literally be the reason he doesn’t make it home to his baby sister and then the loudest  _SLAM_ you’ve ever heard in your life makes you scream and trip backwards in terror as the front door is thrown open and crashes into the wall.

Your heart overcomes everything for a few split seconds, and your vision swims with too-bright, glossy colors before the adrenaline pipes down and it’s all nauseatingly crystal clear at once. The storm still simmers viciously outside in moonlight-coloured dense whirls and dust, but on the welcome mat is a man — and Minseok coughs and presses his head weakly to the floor.

He’s flushed, you notice from the glimpse of his cheeks that you get, and his skin is damp and splotchy. He’s trembling like a leaf, too, and just when you suck in a gasp to yell or cry or say anything, he lifts his head enough to give you a lopsided, exhausted smile and buckles back to his knees. In his hand, clutched like a lifesaver, is your godforsaken hat, and everything hits you at once in a whimper and waterfall of tears.

“ _Idiot!_ ” You sob, throat dry and choked, stumbling over your own feet on your way to collapse beside him, hands anywhere you can touch him. You’re not thinking insofar as doing, just acting on mindless reflex as you hiccup and splutter out indignant, meaningless questions about if he’s okay and how could he be so  _incomparably horrible_  and how glad, how painfully glad you are that he’s here and alive and yours.

It takes about a minute for the shocked crying to wear off and you to stop freaking out. Wiping fretfully at your face and sniffling, you clap your palms over your cheeks sternly to slap some sense back into you before swallowing down the knot in your throat and preparing to stave off any hypothermia.

The first order of business is to shove the door closed and lock it firmly. You will not under any circumstances let him leave this place for the next twenty-four hours, so help you god, lest you had a full-blown panic attack and could never look at cabins or snow the same way again.

Gritting your teeth, you set to work on the sad mess of wet, shivering male flumped on the ground in front of you. Brushing off your hands, you peel off his soaked hoodie and throw it to the side. His shirt underneath is just as heavy from the melted snow he’s collected on his foolhardy mission, and without batting an eye you find the hem at the bottom and murmur, “C’mon, baby, I gotta get this off you, too,” before tugging it up. Minseok grunts but tries to cooperate, and for the second time you’re rewarded with the very generous view of his sinewy chest. His back heaves and falls with his labored breathing, and it knocks you out of any potential daydreaming as you immediately begin removing his drenched socks — sock, actually, one was missing — too.

You’re sure you learned about hypothermia at some point in your life, either from your mom or a class or  _something_ , but you’re drawing a blank on most things spare the obvious. It’s no good for him to keep soaked-through, freezing clothes on, but he also needs warmth, and as soon as possible.

“Minseok?” you prompt, delicately brushing his stringy hair back and out of his face. His nose is red and his cheekbones hint at a rawness from the windburn, and you don’t think twice before soothing your fingertips over the rosy skin with a frown. “I’m… I’m going to run you a hot bath. Don’t move or I’ll kill you. Please.”

He nods, you think, with another grunt of understanding. You hesitate only a moment before running across the cabin to grab a quilt off of a guest bedroom bed and hurrying to cocoon him in it tightly, tucking his hair back behind his ears just because. There’s no need for him to have melted snow dripping in his face.

“Stay there,” you croak again, and you don’t want to leave him there. But you make your legs move, and your feet follow suit as you scurry down the hall to the bathroom and crank the knobs on the tub to as hot as they can go.

When you return to your mess, you take stock of his condition again. It’s only been a few short minutes, but he’s still in noticeably poor shape and is struggling to breathe right. You hate yourself in that moment — you are the reason he’s in this state, after all — but stifle the pity party for later. Right now, you need to haul him up and get him in the tub somehow, and pray he didn’t get frostbite. How long had he been out there again? Fifteen, twenty minutes? Was that long enough for it to set in?

“Can you walk a little bit?” You stretch your arms around his shoulders, surprisingly broad now that you’re up close and hugging him, in a way, and steady yourself to start heaving him up. Minseok gets the picture in his semi-coherent form, and makes a strangled noise as he shifts and tries to get back up on his knees at the very least.

“There we go,” you encourage him, but your voice is tight and too high-pitched to sound natural. You force a reassuring smile anyway, and squeeze him a little harder. “It’s a really short walk, I promise, and then you won’t have to walk for as long as you want. The bath will feel so, so good, you won’t believe how good the water will feel — it’s all steamy and hot and… c-c’mon, Minseokie, we can do this together, right? Let’s get you w-warmed up.”

You’re sure the effort on his part is monumental when he struggles to his feet. Minseok wobbles dangerously, but you cling to him, unyielding and desperate as you keep up a constant stream of chatter — _it’s just down the hall, don’t worry, one foot in front of the other, I’ve got you, I won’t let you fall, let’s get you in the bath and all nice and warm and toasty, don’t worry, I’m right here, we’re almost there, look how strong you are…_  — and the walk down the hall lasts a century before you make it into the bathroom.

You’re lucky when you arrive; the bathwater has mixed well between the initial frigid outpour and the currently-scalding temperature to make it just hot enough for him. You gracelessly pry the blanket from him, kicking it away in order to maneuver him to the tub, and you keep a tight grip on the arm slung around your shoulders as you help him get in one leg at a time. You’d neglected the sweatpants, but figured they’d heat up in the tub with him, so it would be fine.

It had to be.

The second his toes make contact with the water, he hisses and flinches — you make to stop him, immediately snapping back into frantic concern, but the next second he’s groaning sinfully as he forces his body into the sea of relief.

“ _Fuck_ ,” you hear him wheeze hoarsely, and if you weren’t so worried it might have left you reeling for days to come.

“Good boy, Minseokie,” you swallow thickly, wincing as you strain to make sure he doesn’t collapse into the water all at once. “In we go.”

And then, finally, he’s sinking into the water with bittersweet pleasure spread across his features in perfect, painful bliss.

It’s only a little while longer before the tub fills adequately enough, and you turn off the faucet. The whole cabin goes quiet — the only thing you can hear is the muffled sounds of the blizzard picking up outside, but that doesn’t matter; you’re safe and sound in here.  _He’s_ safe and sound in here, and after a preliminary check of his hands and feet, you ascertain that he probably doesn’t have any permanent damage.

A weight crumbles from your shoulders.  _Thank fucking god._

“Hey, Minseok?” You’re only being so careful with him because he seems so drained. The exertion has him still trying to catch his breath, and his gaze is heavy-lidded, exhausted, but he manages to glance up at you with a silent  _yes?_

Fuck. You can’t cry more. You shouldn’t. You needed to take care of him.

“Are you good to sit up on your own for a minute? I need to run to the kitchen. I’ll be right back. But if you can’t, let me know—”

“I’m…” Minseok’s voice is raspy and has hardly any strength behind it. Your heart twists aggressively in your chest like a knife, and you bite your lip as you hold your breath to listen to him completely. “…Okay.”

Fuck! “Okay,” you smile unconvincingly. “Don’t move too much. I’ll be right back. I promise.”

You make tea in record time. Pacing the kitchen, you keep whipping your head in the direction of the hallway at even the tiniest sounds of water sloshing and grow increasingly tempted to scream at the dumb kettle so it will  _boil faster_ , but eventually it does and you pour a piping hot cup of tea and a separate mug of cocoa. You don’t know which one he’ll want, so you bring both anyway at the risk of being foolish.

You are relieved to find him upright and alive upon your return.

“Hey,” you greet in an awkward warble. You set the drinks down on the floor beside the tub and scoot beside him on the raised step. “I’ve got tea and hot chocolate when you feel up to it.”

Minseok offers a weak smile in response. You lean forward onto the rim of the tub, trying to calm down bit by bit. You’re thinking you’ll give him a minute more to relax before you maybe wash his hair and get him some fresh clothes.

Then, your foot touches something cold and wet.

You scowl at first, snapping down to see… a puddle of water surrounding a mass of cloth. Sweatpants, specifically. And there was only one person in this cabin who had been wearing sweatpants.

You allow yourself a long pause to dissociate and pointedly not think about Minseok’s naked body in the bathtub, exposed and… Okay. None of that. There was literally nothing wrong. In fact, you felt bad for not just taking them off earlier, but it didn’t make sense at the time. This was fine. Everything was completely fine.

Except he looks like he’s nodding off.

You think only concussion patients are supposed to be kept awake, but something nags at you to not let him fall asleep so quickly — especially in a bathtub. At least let you get him cleaned up and in bed before he passed out.

“I don’t think I’ve ever… e-ever been that scared in my life,” you admit out of nowhere, dipping your hands in the water to splash it gently over his bare shoulders and warm him up further. You’re very,  _very_ careful not to look into the water. “You really scared me. You didn’t have to do… all that. I hope I didn’t… didn’t make it seem like I wanted you to.”

Minseok shakes his head no. You can’t argue, so you just fight down a blush and keep dripping water across his skin.

“I brought jasmine tea.” Your announcement comes from out of the blue, and you watch a droplet travel down his collarbone. You can feel his eyes on you, watching you watch him, and try to ignore that, too. “I-If you’re ready to drink something. The other is just hot chocolate. I didn’t make it with milk or anything exciting, sorry. Not that I think I could ever replicate yours.”

“In a minute,” he rasps, offering another weak smile.

“Okay. That sounds good. Don’t force yourself, okay? I just… Anyway, um, just… relax. Don’t worry about anything. I’m going to take care of you, and I swear to god if I wake up to breakfast I’m going to throw you back out there and lock all the doors and windows.”

You laugh timidly so he knows you’re only teasing — well, you’re dead serious, but still teasing. Scooping warm water in your hands, you pour it over his skin once more, spreading your fingers over the back of his neck and rubbing to transfer the heat there, too. Minseok practically melts under your touch, and you hear him exhale thinly, leaning forward to offer you more room to massage him.

Sheesh. Greedy creature.

You smile anyway, lopsided, and sidle up behind the tub to get better access to his neck and shoulders, meticulously avoiding looking in the water.

“How about…” You crack your knuckles and flex your arms before resuming your ministrations with long strokes of pressure, trying to relax his tense muscles. “…We get your hair washed, and then I can get you a change of clothes, and we’ll get you back in bed. And tomorrow I won’t put my head out the window, and my hat won’t fly off my head, and you won’t make rash, dangerous decisions that almost give me a heart attack and take a year off of my life. Lean forward a little more?”

“Roger that,” he agrees dryly, and you have to stop yourself from thoughtlessly kissing the bridge of his spine with a tiny shake of your head before reaching out with your foot to grab your travel-sized shampoo bottle with your toes.

Minseok, you realize, is beginning to feel better.

You’re in the middle of wetting his hair when he manages to ask for the tea, and you almost fall into the tub in your haste to grab it for him. At first, you’re worried he isn’t strong enough to hold it properly, but he lets the cup sit halfway in the water to help it float and takes a slow, sleepy sip before sighing in pleasure. Okay. Good. That was a good sign.

“Be sure not to spill,” you warn him with your fingers dragging across his scalp, and he just purrs in response. Okay. Maybe this will be harder to deal with than you thought.

It definitely is.

You work up a lather between your palms before scrubbing his hair. It’s very soft and pretty clean already — stupid boys and their societal obligation to have the low-maintenance life of short hair — and pleasantly thick to the touch. Minseok sighs again, and this time it’s more of a groan, and it does things to you like nothing else. You wipe away sweat from your brow, a consequence of the steamy moisture in the air, and focus pathetically on scratching gentle circles into his crown, pulling the soap through to the tips.

“There we go,” you whisper for no reason. “Much better.”

Minseok nods disjointedly, shifting slightly and creating baby ripples. “Thanks,” he croaks.

“It’s nothing. Tilt back, I’m gonna rinse it out.”

He’s very compliant. And it’s cute. Endearing. Every single thing you do seems to make him unbearably, quietly happy, and in turn it leaves you simply a mess. You just want to get him in bed and then go back to rotting away in your own room, behind the safety of several doors and walls between you and a dozen blankets.

You’re glad he finishes his tea, though, and after placing the empty cup and saucer to the side you get up to grab some fresh towels. Fuck, you should have put them in the dryer or something, but it’s too late for that so you just waddle back to him and thank the heavens that the shampoo has made the water too murky to see anything.

Except for a bright splash of odd color.

At your silence, Minseok turns, and then follows your gaze. Two ticks pass before he goes, “Oh!” and lifts your sodden cap from the bathwater with guilt on his features.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, mouth twisted with humility. “I guess I forgot.”

Your jaw hangs open slightly as your heart beats and beats away with renewed ferocity. You’re torn between disbelief and laughter and far, far too much emotion for you to comprehend. Part of you is close to choking back tears again, and you very quickly blink those away before giving him a bright smile and rubbing at your eyes.

“Thank you,” you whisper, and if you didn’t know any better you would say he was blushing. But it was probably just from the bath.

Minseok delicately places the cap on the tiles, and you present him with a towel.

“Alright, up we go…” You avert your gaze elsewhere; anywhere. Just not too low, and not too far in his direction.

The problem with all of this is that no matter what you’re doing, he stares at you. Really, truly stares.

It gives you a newfound appreciation of his beauty, in a way; Minseok stares openly and shamelessly. Stupidly, even! He stares like he has utterly nothing to lose from it. The raw hunger and amazement in his eyes leaves you dumbfounded, especially with his face mere inches from yours as you haul him up and gingerly get him back out of the tub, one leg at a time.

You wonder if he hit his head somewhere along the line, because there is no reason why a hypothermic man should be giving you bedroom eyes at this juncture. You don’t even look  _good_ right now — you had just been crying not all that long ago, and your skin was damp and flushed from the steam of the bath. Your hair was a mess. Your life was a mess, too, at the moment, but for some fucking unknown reason he was still gawking like you were the one thing he wanted more agonizingly than he’d wanted anything in the world.

And with a pang deep, deep in your stomach, you realize you really want to kiss him right now. He had a look on his face like he really wanted that, too.

Shaking your head jerkily, you try to maintain a semblance of composure as your face heats up uncomfortably. You will the warmth to stop pooling in your belly and return to normal, safe, platonic places that don’t have to do with taking advantage of him in such an addled state — because that’s what this has to be, it has to be him out of his fucking mind due to irresponsible, horrible exposure to the elements — and remind yourself over and over fruitlessly that kissing him would be  _dumb_ and  _moronic_ and  _stupid_ and similar adjectives. No matter how badly you want to do it. How good it would feel to do so.

“Let’s dry you off before you get sick,” you mutter, hiding behind your eyelashes and hair, and it almost knocks you off your feet when he feebly reaches out and pushes your hair out of the way in order to whisper  _okay_ back.

You give up as soon as you’re done toweling his hair.

“I’m gonna… get you some clothes,” you excuse yourself, still avoiding any eye contact. He’s mostly covered by this point, minus the skin that’s smooth and hiding layers of muscle that he could use to pick you up and carry you anywhere  _he_ wanted, even if that meant his bedroom with the door locked and the lights off, and Minseok just nods appreciatively.

Golly gee, you think, you really can’t deal with this much longer.

There’s peace and distraction in sorting through his clothes for comfortable, insulated things he can sleep in; you decide that a hoodie, one you know he’s had since freshman year of college because you remember him changing his Facebook picture for the first time in centuries to one of him wearing it with his mom during orientation. And some sweatpants. And briefs, that were just black and snug and fuck, this was a disasterpiece.

You reassured yourself repeatedly that all you had to do was get him back here, tuck him in, and then you could fuck off to your room for as long as need be. What you needed right now was space so you could clear your head from the deranged, delusional inhabitant that had taken up board in it that had Minseok’s face and Minseok’s voice and peculiarly soft, hungry way of observing you when you did inane things.

And so what if you touched yourself? It was your room. And it had been almost a week since the last time you’d done anything resembling that. Being perfectly realistic and honest with yourself, it just made things difficult that Minseok was so fucking hot. And he was really nice. You couldn’t blame your hormones for reacting so viscerally to that.

It’s not like you’d gotten any action in… fuck, had it really been over a year at this point? There was that one hook up when you went to visit a friend in Vancouver. You weren’t even sure if that counted it was so abysmal.

You’re quick about pressing the folded batch of clothes through the opening in the doorway, which the man ruining your life in question accepts graciously and promises he can put them on by himself without passing out. True to his word, he is clothed and trodding out a short while later, smiling sheepishly as he polishes off the lukewarm cocoa.

“C’mon, Minseokie,” you murmur, holding out your hand to guide him by his lower back down the hall.

Minseok all but crashes into his bed. He was probably more exhausted than he’d acknowledged, but you knew what the sight of a freshly made bed could do to a person when they were tired enough. It’s a two-man effort to get him  _under_ the covers and not on top of them, and once he’s all tucked in and looking far too cozy to be legal, you’re saying your farewells and fantasizing about your own covers with a hint of guilt—

“Wait,” his voice interrupts your exit, and a hand wraps firmly around your wrist. How could he still be so strong when he was about to pass out? That fact makes you forget to be wary of why he’s even stopping you to begin with.

“Huh? What’s wrong?”

When you swing your head back in his direction, you’re met with a steady, unreadable expression. Minseok doesn’t seem so sleepy anymore.

“Stay with me?”

The question is simple, lilted without a trace of ulterior motive as he tugs at your hand insistently. He scoots over an inch or two in the full-sized bed, allowing you the room to flump down dumbly beside him.

“Um,” you choke, “what?”

“Don’t wanna be alone yet,” he sighs, and doesn’t let go of your hand. Then, as an afterthought he adds, “You’re so…  _hot_.”

“Of course I seem  _warm_ compared to you,” you splutter, grasping at straws at his dreadful choice of wording. What the hell just happened to your exit plan? You were distracted by his fingers drumming idly against the back of yours, the way he laid beneath you, fragile and with eyes smoldering like the fireplace. What the hell was he planning on doing? Was he really that messed up from the cold?

“Yeah, well,” he yawns, and pulls you onto the bed further, coaxing your body to line up against his, “I’m very cold and you feel nice. Stay?”

How are you supposed to say no to that?

The answer is that you don’t. You can’t even speak as you awkwardly adjust yourself to sit up beside him, and you’re content to just  _sit_ until he frowns and begins trying to drag the covers over you, too. You want to protest, but again in a surprising show of capability he wrangles them up and over, his arms crossing over you in some form of a not-quite-embrace as he tucks you in, too.

“Much better.” He says in a low voice.

Both of you are lulled into quiet after that.

Part of you knows you should probably go pick up the wet clothes off of the bathroom floor; you should probably also wash the dirty dishes, and go turn off the TV in the living room. Tidy up. You should also make an excuse to go crawl into  _your_ bed and not sit here drowning in the clean, enticingly masculine scent of Kim Minseok mixed with the faint fragrance of your shampoo. Worse still, even if he claims to be cold, you can feel the comforting body heat that comes from where your arm presses to his and where the rest of it remains trapped under the bedding, drifting over you sweetly.

If this keeps up, you’re going to want to fall asleep right here, consequences be damned. Especially as the minutes tick by, and your ears begin to pick up the little things; his deep, even breathing, relaxed and hypnotizing, the pattering of snow against the glass and the rustling that the winds bring with it. Even from the living room, you hear the distinct crackle of the fire steadily burning down to its coals.

“What’s bothering you?”

You flinch at the disturbance of his interjection, and quell your racing heart with an inward groan as you rub your eyes tiredly.

“I want to go to bed, I think,” you mumble, and Minseok shifts beside you, making you hyperaware of all the places you’re touching.

“Then go to bed.”

“You asked me not to leave.”

“Do our desires have to be mutually exclusive?” There’s a foxlike teasing to his tone now, and you shoot him a twisted-mouth glare. He suggested it as if it were no big deal at all.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. Which reminds me…”

Minseok rolls over more properly now, resting his bent arm under his head to watch you with his full attention. He certainly doesn’t  _seem_ that sick at all anymore; a touch sleepy, perhaps, but suspiciously bright-eyed and thoughtful and observant. A dangerous, dangerous combination coming from him, because even when he’s calculating, he’s so soft about it.

You wet your lips cautiously, and fidget in your spot, unsure if you want to put more space between you or just suck it up.

His question makes you wish you had left when you’d had the chance.

“…I was wondering, if… Aghh. Since… since I just made some hasty and not exactly safe decisions that could’ve killed me, it made me overthink some things? Like the way you being sad about your hat was more important than my own life at the time. I really hate when you’re upset, did you know that? I don’t like when  _anyone_ is sad, but it drives me, just…  _crazy_ when it’s you, because I… I-I think I used to know what to do, once. Before. I used to be good at cheering you up. It’s just, after all these years I think… I think I forgot how to be nice to you just the right way. Like it always backfires. Somehow.” He laughs at this in a quiet, pathetic kind of way — he’s laughing at himself, not with himself. He’s laughing how a very broken man might laugh at his own unmanageable grief. “Honestly? Quite honestly, I can’t  _stand_ it—”

Your voice warbles out without your permission, cracking halfway though. “Y-you’ve been thinking about that in the last hour?”

Minseok doesn’t miss a beat, and partially hides his face in the pillow. “Yes. So, I mean that it makes me afraid that you really, really,  _really_ don’t like me, and I don’t know how to undo that. And I hate it a little bit, because I also don’t know why or how things got like this.”

Your answer is not gentle. And it does not miss a beat.

“Because you broke my sister’s heart.”

There’s a lot of pent-up emotion behind the confession, but it doesn’t matter — what matters is that you’ve finally admitted a truth that you have buried deep and long, and now it’s out in the open. Minseok’s eyes go a tad wider and he blinks with bewilderment.

“I broke her heart?” He echoes. “Did she tell you that?”

There’s that telltale burning behind your eyes again and you inhale sharply through your nose to stave it off. You would sooner die than start crying in front of this jerk over this nonsense. Grimacing, you shake your head, pulling your fingers into tight, shaky fists under the blankets. “No,” you answer, lingering over just the right words to convey your anger. “She didn’t have to. It was obvious. You didn’t have to sit around watching her— her fucking crying and not eating and… Fuck. You really freaking  _suck_ , you know that?”

Minseok has shifted himself into sitting up, too, now, and you’re bothered that he’s taller than you again and wish he would just lay back down. You despise how small and vulnerable he makes you feel in the span of a heartbeat. The expression on his face, however, is almost painful to observe — he holds all the confusion of a child being reprimanded, a dash of heartbreak thrown in. The normal, kind person inside of you – the same one that had ran him a bath and made him tea and fluffed his pillows – wants to smooth out the worry lines in his face and apologize for everything until he’s okay, and to promise that you’ll fall asleep with him and that you won’t make a fuss ever again. But you’ve been holding onto this grudge for too long to let them go now. In some way, you’ve been waiting for this moment for a long, long time, and it would be wrong to give it up now for some misplaced sense of altruism.

So you cling to your spite and hold your ground, weak as it may be.

It’s a full minute before Minseok manages to speak up again.

“I don’t understand,” he admits in a shaky whisper, and the statement almost breaks the dam that’s holding your tears in.

Gritting your teeth, you exhale out more, prodding him for emphasis in the chest as you lay out all his sins. “ _You!_  You… She liked you SO much, okay? I saw her diaries full of pink highlighter hearts with your name written in them! And she was so fucking excited to tell Mom when you started going out, and like… She was obsessed! She was so happy that you had noticed her that way. And then, after like, months of actual happiness, you just waltz in like it’s no big deal and break it off and leave her to rot. She was so depressed. She cried every day for a week and hardly ate and didn’t want to leave her room. And I… I… You…”

This is the hard part, you realize numbly — this is the part that puts cracks in your armor, everywhere, all at once, and leaves you a flustered disaster with no real argument to stand on.

“…You’re just too damn  _nice!_  How the fuck can you break her heart and then turn around and still be friends?! A-and she, she still calls you  _Minseokie_ like it’s no big fucking deal! Six years later and she still invites you to things?! I don’t get it! I don’t fucking get it!  _Look_ at you! You’re beautiful, and you’re super nice, and you make really really great food, and you like good shows, and good music, and you’re good at board games and card pyramids, and you can sing… You can talk about anything and actually li- _listen_ even if you don’t care, and I can’t even  _tell_ when you don’t care because you always seem like you do, and—!”

“I always care.” He pauses. “So you’re mad because I’m nice?”

“Yes! Of course I am! Because you’re supposed to be the worst! I’m not supposed to be  _friends_ with you, I don’t  _want_  to like you, you’re my sister’s ex-fucking- _boyfriend!_ ”

Minseok’s hands rest on the topmost blanket, fingers splayed and his head cocked with a patient curiosity that cuts straight through your frantic demeanor. The corners of his mouth hold a shadow of a smile as he quips, “Does that mean we’re friends?”

“No!” you snap instantly, horrified at the mere idea.

“Then what are we?”

But you don’t have an answer to that. In fact, his question has knocked all the steam out of you at once.

“I don’t know,” you whisper dumbly.

“That’s okay. That’s fair. I mean, I don’t think hating me for a breakup that happened all the way back in high school is quite fair, but… Hmmm. Different question: do you hate me?”

You’re too tender from your vitriol to lie to him.

“No.” You’re staring up at the ceiling. His weight tilts the mattress in his favor, and you wish your legs weren’t touching, and that you couldn’t feel the barest presence of his fingertips unintentionally skimming the covers over your left thigh.

“Great!” Minseok beams coyly, and he drums against the sheets and it goes straight to your overworked, oversensitive nerves. “Well, do you like me?”

You don’t know why that question takes you so off-guard; in your surprise, you meet his gaze, lips parted in stunned silence before you squeak, “…Yes?”

He thinks about that answer for just a second before tilting his head thoughtfully in the other direction, eyes narrowed on you.

“Then why don’t I give you something to be angry about?”

He doesn’t close the gap between your mouths quickly. It is, however, a single fluid motion that has you too entranced to react in time. One second he’s looking at your mouth, and then the next his is covering it, lips warm and pliant. His kiss urges you to spill all your stifled emotions with no end in sight. You can’t help but kiss him back in a flurry of trembling hands clinging to his sleeves and a gasp for air between each one, his lips dragging sinfully against yours as they peck your top and bottom lip separately, then each corner of your mouth before fully encapsulating it again and again.

 _Yes_ , your head sing-songs amidst the bliss,  _yes, yes, yes_. Minseok isn’t good at kissing – he’s  _too_ good at kissing. He’s lit an inferno in your chest, and the heat writhes and snakes through your every nerve that you haven’t felt since you were sixteen and fantasizing about him for the first time alone in your room. The embarrassment of that fact combined with the lightest graze of his teeth against your mouth elicits a muffled whimper from you, and you  _feel_ him go rigid and a million degrees hotter at the same time you blush from mortification.

“Oh,” he croaks out, smiling crookedly against your lips, “hell, girl.”

You create a strangled noise in response, and scramble to break away to hide your face. Clinging to his sweater, his fingers wrap tightly around your wrists again, pinning them in place as he tries to lean back in for another tormenting kiss and you just splutter in dizzy protest — holy fucking shit, what were you  _doing?_  Were you really just making out with him? In his bed? Cold logic washes over you like a broken pilot light shower. Minseok had probably most definitely suffered intense brain damage from being out in the snow for so long. Maybe he acquired brain damage  _before_ that, because who the fuck jumped out a window to save a fucking HAT?

In some backwards way, the rationale makes you feel better. Because it means this — this insanity, this… kissing… was the product of his crazy, and not at all yours.

Probably.

“M-Minseokie,” you stammer, and flush with mortification at the accidental endearment thrown in. “Listen to me right now, if we… if you don’t chill out, I am going straight to my room! Because you are not thinking straight right now and it’s because you have hypothermia, and your brain probably has frostbite, and—”

“I’m not suffering from any sort of impairment whatsoever unless we’re talking about how badly I want you right now.”

His response is concise and dripping with sincerity. There’s no hiding the burning in his eyes anymore and the way it makes his irises naught but a thin circle around his blown pupils, glazed over with rampant lust. His thumbs, resting on the inside of your palms, began a slow tracing of your skin that had you unconsciously gasping for air at the electricity behind the simple touch.

“Fuck you.” You swallow thickly, and Minseok looks like he can’t choose between laughing and dying at the understatement of the century.

“We could do that,” he offers gently, and you can’t tell if the thrill that bombards you straight to your marrow is fear or craving.

“Yeah, you’re definitely dying,” you determine in a measly squeak. You’re strangely detached from your own body as you peel yourself off of him, forcing yourself to let go, to give both of you precious and necessary space to think clearly. As soon as he realizes what you’re doing, however, his hands are back on yours, gripping them desperately as he tries to anchor you back to your place beside him.

“Please don’t,” he pleads instantly, his tone flipping like a switch into what one might call groveling. “I’ll be good. I promise.”

“Like hell you will, demon, you’re delusional and the very  _opposite_ of chill and I—”

“I can be chill. I promise. Please stay.”

You knew, dumbly, that you had already lost the battle again. There was a hard edge to his request; he wasn’t joking, he’d really meant it. He quite achingly wanted you to remain where you were, and all you could do was powerlessly hope that his promise had been sincere. After all, did you really  _want_ to have to get up out of the warm nest of his bed? Go clean up the mess you’d left in the rest of the cabin? Make your own bed? Yeah, no.

For a measure, after a long sigh and getting comfortable again, there’s a solemn quiet between you. A truce. You both rest in silence, listening to the blustery winds outside and each other’s muted breaths, the tiny shifts of your bodies existing in the cramped space of the bed. When you peek over, you catch him with heavy-lidded eyes, sinking into his pillows and looking considerably better than he had an hour ago, and you think he might just fall asleep.

Thus, when his raspy, smile-lilted voice reaches your ears, it catches you completely off-guard.

“So,” Minseok yawns, rolling his neck and cracking it, “you’ve rally been so riled up for almost six years over a two month thing between your sister and I during high school? Like, our dinky little First Boyfriend/First Girlfriend relationship?”

Hearing it stated so plainly, so bluntly, puts nails in your heart. The blistering heat of mortification crawls up your skin and your lungs constrict at the actuality of it all, and your head goes to war with itself and him instantly — was it really that simple? No, of course not, but — well, yes, actually, it was. Had it really been six years ago, you wonder? If it was high school, then… Yes. He was absolutely right.

“Has it been that long?” Is all you manage to whisper, stupidly. Minseok just smiles.

“Just about.”

Fuck. Christ. How were you so pathetic?

“Oh,” you whisper. “Yeah. Then I guess.”

You can’t understand for the life of you why Minseok is the epitome of patience. He’s still curled into the blankets with an expression that isn’t unkind whatsoever; his eyes are closed and his lips are ticked up in the corners, and you swallow down the hard urge to kiss him again, because that’s the worst idea you’ve had since high school when he—

“Why?”

In that moment, you’re positive that is the most difficult question you have ever been asked. The cabin is deadly silent in that moment.

You don’t want to answer him. Deep down — deep, deep fucking down, you know why you would rather do  _anything_ but answer that question honestly.

The problem is that Minseok has always read you like a book.

He thinks, passingly, with a faint and unbelievable spark of hope, that he can still read you as well as he did in junior year. The way your eyelashes hide your uneasy eyes, how your cheeks tense with your clenched jaw, the subtle stiffness to your neck and telltale twisting that your shoulders do to curve away from him and protect yourself — they all stick out like a sore thumb, and for one precious instant Minseok feels happiness and complete and utter relief.

Because he thinks, just maybe, he might know what all those things mean. 

Something he scarcely dared to even hope for.

He pries his arm out from under the quilt at a slow pace, and though it’s a great risk, he allows himself the indulgence of letting his knuckles graze across the back of your hand. His pulse pounds obnoxiously in his head, and he doesn’t miss the way your mouth twitches with nervousness, but you don’t pull away and you don’t chide. He exhales soundlessly, and doesn’t give any other sign of his unspoken, small victory.

None of this feels like it’s really happening to him. He can’t even dare to believe it.

“High school is a really foolish time, isn’t it?” He starts up again, speaking casually. Just normal, ordinary friends chatting and sitting in bed during a snowstorm, almost holding hands. “I was really glad when we all became friends, because my guy friends were… a handful, for lack of a better term. You guys were a fun breath of fresh air. Much more low maintenance,” he laughs, and you repress a soft shiver at his reassuring thumb rolling over your palm with a delicate touch. “But I was also kind of an idiot, so when your sister confessed I just thought… well, she’s so cool and very pretty and in my grade, so of course I should date her, right? And it would be a great way to hang out with both of you more.”

The only things you can process is the way your heart rumbles in your skull and the steady stream of words Minseok keeps up as he rambles on his story (that you’re not entirely sure why he’s telling you). However, his touch on your hand falters, and you expressly feel how he’s grown a tad more shy and you’re met with a wave of sympathy because you don’t want Minseok to be nervous around you, at all. You don’t want him to be ashamed of his story, or talking about things that are important to him. They’re important to you, too, in a way, no matter how rough it is to admit that.

So you suck in a breath, fumble for a smile, and confess something you thought you’d never let see the light of day.

“Actually,” you giggle uneasily, “funny story. I, ah, tried to stop myself from like… having a crush on you, back then, because of all that. Since you were a grade above me. And my sister. That would have been weird, huh?”

“‘Tried’?” The intrigue in his echo is apparent, and your face is  _definitely_ on fire and you decide it’s probably time to not explain yourself any further and ignore the way his fingertips pause right on top of yours, waiting, waiting.

“Sure!” You chirp back with false enthusiasm. “And that made it super duper easy to hate you afterwards. Anyway—”

“But why did you want to hate me afterwards?”

Maybe you should have just locked the front door after he jumped out the window.

Giving the air a surly look, you frown and try to figure out a way to give him a non-answer.

“Didn’t we go over this already?” you grumble unhappily.

You’re raring up for another fight, scrambling in your mind to stock up on ammunition and exit strategies to wiggle out of all his underhanded questions, but are met with nothing more from him. Surprised, you turn to him and find him gazing at you with far too much subtle contentment for you to feel not suspicious, and before you can snap at him he just shuts his eyes and snuggles into the pillow sleepily.

“Thanks for saving my life,” he murmurs sweetly instead, and you literally  _feel_ yourself get choked up at the suddenness of it all.

“Whatever,” you mumble back, and don’t resist when his fingers lace securely into yours. Without another word, you curl up beside him, and let your fingers naturally relax into his; you’re not quite holding his hand, not really. It just looks that way. He’s the one doing all the holding. It feels nice, too, and you can just enjoy that and not make a big thing out of it. He’s delusional from fatigue anyway, you think.

The rest of the night goes by uneventfully. You half-watch, half-listen as Minseok drifts into a deep, peaceful slumber, and the sight fills you with thick, fluffy serenity. If only he could be so harmless like this all the time.

You’re halfway to hoping he rests well and wakes up with no brain damage when you tumble headfirst into dreams of a pretty voice singing in a kitchen.


End file.
